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“We expect that Alberta’s land-use plans will reflect global standards for landscape protection. We need to approach planning at an ecosystem-wide scale, and create a network of new protected areas and management zones between them in order to maintain ecosystem services -- like clean water and flood and drought control -- and with room for wildlife to roam.”

Wendy Francis

Former Y2Y President

Info

Alberta Headwaters

Photo: Alan Ernst

Y2Y is working to ensure greater protection for Alberta’s headwaters.

Y2Y is working to ensure greater protection for Alberta’s headwaters.

Following 40 years of pressure from hunters, ranchers and other Albertans, the provincial government announced the creation of a new Castle Provincial Park and expansion of the Castle Wildland Provincial Park in September 2015.

On Jan. 20, 2017, Premier Rachel Notley and Minister of Environment and Parks Shannon Phillips announced that the Castle Parks had passed an order-in-council. The park boundaries were officially set and a draft management plan covering both parks was released.

That draft plan includes a three- to five-year phase-out of off-highway vehicle recreation in both parks and outlines co-management potential with the Piikani Nation.

The Castle is a special place for many Albertans and serves as the headwaters for many in the southern part of the province. Image: Stephen Legault

The Castle area is home to over 200 rare or at-risk species, including grizzly bears, wolverine, westslope cutthroat trout, limber and whitebark pine.

The region is a vital corridor that keeps wide-ranging wildlife moving north and south through the Yellowstone to Yukon region, helping link protected areas like Waterton-Glacier with the Rocky Mountain Parks further north.

It’s also part of Alberta’s headwaters and is the most significant basin in the Oldman River watershed, accounting for 30 per cent of its waters. The Oldman serves millions of people downstream as it flows through communities such as Fort Macleod and Lethbridge before merging with the Bow River, eventually emptying into Hudson Bay.

The Castle has significance for indigenous communities, including Nitsitapii, Piikani (Peigan), Siksika, Kainaiwa (Blood), Blackfeet, Nakoda (Stoney) and K'tunaxa First Nations. The Piikani locate their origin story in this landscape. Many people from these nations continue to use the area to pursue their traditional ways of life.

What can you do? Take the Alberta Government survey now.

Thank Premier Notley, Minister Phillips, and Alberta’s hardworking public servants for making the right call in the Castle. Show your support for a conservation-oriented management plan. Then, get out to the Castle and show some love for your headwaters!

Read on for more information about our work in more of Alberta's important headwater regions.

THREAT

Headwaters are the source of all rivers or streams and include glaciers, streams, tributaries and more. Alberta’s mountain headwaters provide water for millions of people, deliver important natural services such as flood and drought control, provide critical habitat for wildlife and offer abundant recreation opportunities.

While some of our headwaters, and surrounding habitat, are protected, many are not. Poor management practices over many decades mean that some mountain watersheds are no longer healthy and intact.

OPPORTUNITY

The Alberta government is currently engaging in land-use planning for the entire province. Four of the seven provincial planning regions are within the Yellowstone to Yukon region.

These land-use plans are a blueprint for activities that will occur on the land for the next 50 years. They offer a rare opportunity to increase protection for Alberta’s headwaters by managing forestry to reduce flood and drought impacts, creating new protected areas, preserving habitat for endangered and threatened species such as caribou and grizzly bear, and conserving the mountain viewscapes and recreational opportunities that draw so many residents and visitors to our region.

WHAT Y2Y IS DOING

Areas such as the Castle Watershed are important for the downstream communities that depend on the clean and safe water that originates here.

Y2Y is leading the initiative to influence these land-use plans to protect the headwaters within the Yellowstone to Yukon region.

Key to these efforts is bringing together key stakeholders from each region to jointly develop a conservation vision for each region. Y2Y expresses this conservation vision to the government through the formal public comment period, and also to the public by organizing public events.

Finally, we highlight opportunities for our supporters and the public to weigh in during public comment periods.

Be it resolved that the Legislative Assembly urge the Government to increase its efforts to conserve and manage public lands in Alberta’s headwater regions to optimize downstream water security for future generations of Albertans.

Here are recommendations from the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society to protect our headwaters, also available as a .jpg for download:

Implement new forestry ground rules for all Eastern Slopes headwater forests that focus on restoring and sustaining watershed health rather than producing a maximum sustained yield of timber. Replace all commercial logging south of the Ghost River with restoration of our forested headwaters;

End new road building for industrial development in our headwaters;

Create new protected areas in Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer and Lethbridge’s headwaters to safeguard their water quality and quantity;

Stop new mining for minerals, coal and gravel near our headwaters and within key watersheds;

Repair and revegetate eroding trails, gullies, soil compaction, mud bogs and other damage caused by motorized off-highway recreation, and provide a limited number of well-engineered vehicle trails outside of parks and other important conservation areas.

Focus on developing economic opportunities that emphasize headwaters conservation like low-impact ecotourism with a focus hiking, biking, fishing, hunting and other sustainable activities.

Address the impact of climate change on our headwaters by repairing riparian areas and restoring habitat for fish and wildlife species such as Westslope Cutthroat trout, bull trout and grizzly bear;

Rename the ‘Forestry Trunk Road’ (also known as Hwy 734) Headwaters Trunk Road to honour and value the sources of our water.

“We’ve heard a lot of talk about headwaters conservation” says Y2Y's Stephen Legault. “What we haven’t seen yet, with the exception of the Castle announcement … is anything in terms of new policy direction on headwaters conservation.”

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Main Office

200 - 1350 Railway Ave

Canmore, AB, T1W 1P6

Canada

Phone: 1.403.609.2666

Toll-free: 1.800.966.7920

US Office

P.O. Box 157

Bozeman, MT, 59771-0157

Phone: 1.403.609.2666

Toll-free: 1.800.966.7920

In the United States, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative is a 501(c) 3 tax-exempt organization, IRS #81-0535303. In Canada, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative Foundation is a registered 149(1)(f) charity, #86430 1841 RR0001.